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In the context of rising fundamentalism, urgent threats to the environment, and the persistence of poverty and deep inequities in the world, 193 nations have pledged to work towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) crafted by UNESCO in 2015. Education is seen as key to attaining all the other SDGs. Within the 'education goal' (Goal #4), there is an explicit target, SDG 4.7, which focuses on 'sustainable development and global citizenship'. Nations are expected to incorporate a focus on SDG 4.7 into their curricula, policies, teacher education programs, and student assessment. PISA has now developed an assessment of 'global competence,' which is presented as a way to assess SDG 4.7. Through this assessment, it seeks to inform policy, curricula, and pedagogies and catalogue 'best practices' for developing students' 'global competence'. Given this ambition and the centrality of 'sustainable development and global citizenship' within the globally endorsed SDGs, it is important to analyze the extent to which the PISA assessment of global competence is usefully able to inform policy and practice and contribute to fulfilling SDG 4.7. We build upon the work of other scholars examining this question, taking a material-semiotic approach inspired by Science and Technology Studies. Empirically, our study is based on documentary analysis, interviews, and 'survey encounters' in which we administered a curated part of the assessment to 15-year-olds and followed this exercise with interviews. We explore how the hard-won stability gained around the notion of 'global competence' through its inscription into the standardized survey instruments is again threatened when the survey instrument encounters diverse 15-year-olds. The survey encounters provide an opportunity to 'test the test', and we conclude that the PISA test of global competence is not as yet in a position to provide useful direction to policy or practice in the promotion of SDG 4.7.

The aim of this paper is to present a schema that maps the terrain of intercultural assessment strategies. This schema is based upon Haraway's semiotic square and has two dimensions. The first considers how distant or near the cultural Other is understood to be -- whether they are perceived a "stranger" or a "neighbour." The second considers whether the student is encouraged to see the cultural Other as an object about whom one learns facts, or if student and the cultural Other are expected to interact as a means to transforming their mutually interrelated lives. We argue that this mapping helps illuminate the benefits and shortcomings of various assessment strategies, highlighting the underlying curricular assumptions and objectives of these assessment strategies. This paper argues that curricular and assessment models that treat cultural Others as neighbours engaged in joint transformative change should increasingly be the focus of intercultural learning and assessment strategies. A review of extant literature found that school systems, international and transnational curriculum bodies, and some for-profit companies provide a wide range of models for assessing student intercultural awareness, understanding and componence. These models differ so significantly that the term "intercultural" may appear a floating signifier. However, the benefit of our schema is in classifying these models by focusing on the forms of intercultural interactions they anticipate.

'Global Competence' (GC) is currently being visualized by international and national bodies as an education imperative. Not only has GC become ubiquitous as a policy idea, it is, in 2018, being assessed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). PISA has quantified the multifaceted concept of GC into a series of measurable and comparable constructs. Using concepts from (Science and Technology Studies) STS, the aim of this paper is to explore how a selection of students in Victoria understand and respond to the assessment of global competence in PISA 2018. The methodology of 'survey encounters' was employed to elicit students' thinking as they encountered the questions on the survey. While the PISA survey was developed to test the students, the methodology of 'survey encounters' also provided an opportunity for the students to test the PISA survey.

Intercultural Understanding and Personal and Social Capability are two General Capabilities in the Australian Curriculum. However, the level of engagement anticipated by students in addressing these general capabilities across the learning continua provided in the curriculum differs significantly both in terms of the cognitive level expected of this engagement (as measured by Bloom's Taxonomy), and of the level of interaction expected between students in meeting the capabilities' learning objectives. Using the work of Bernstein and Fairclough, this paper argues that the Intercultural Understanding general capability requires less intellectual and inter-social engagement than the Personal and Social capability due to underlying assumptions that operate so as to distance the cultural Other, placing them on the periphery of Australian society, despite cultural diversity being, in fact, the lived experience of virtually all Australians. The learning continua, once scrutinised through a linguistic analysis and the lens of Bernstein, point to the absences of deep engagement in Intercultural Understanding capability, particularly when compared with that expected for the Personal and Social capability and begs the question of how Intercultural Understanding can become imagined, sustained or respectful within pedagogical encounters across the Australian Curriculum.

'Global Competence' (GC) is currently being visualized by international and national bodies as an education imperative. Not only has GC become ubiquitous as a policy idea, it is, in 2018, being assessed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). PISA has quantified the multifaceted concept of GC into a series of measurable and comparable constructs. Using concepts from (Science and Technology Studies) STS, the aim of this paper is to explore how a selection of students in Victoria understand and respond to the assessment of global competence in PISA 2018. The methodology of 'survey encounters' was employed to elicit students' thinking as they encountered the questions on the survey. While the PISA survey was developed to test the students, the methodology of 'survey encounters' also provided an opportunity for the students to test the PISA survey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to present a schema that maps the terrain of intercultural assessment strategies. This schema is based upon Haraway's semiotic square and has two dimensions. The first considers how distant or near the cultural Other is understood to be – whether they are perceived a stranger or a neighbour. The second considers whether the student is encouraged to see the cultural Other as an object about whom one learns facts, or if student and the cultural Other are expected to interact as a means to transforming their mutually interrelated lives. We argue that this mapping helps illuminate the benefits and shortcomings of various assessment strategies, highlighting the underlying curricular assumptions and objectives of these assessment strategies. This paper argues that curricular and assessment models that treat cultural Others as neighbours engaged in joint transformative change should increasingly be the focus of intercultural learning and assessment strategies. A review of extant literature found that school systems, international and transnational curriculum bodies, and some for-profit companies provide a wide range of models for assessing student intercultural awareness, understanding and componence. These models differ so significantly that the term "intercultural" may appear a floating signifier. However, the benefit of our schema is in classifying these models by focusing on the forms of intercultural interactions they anticipate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]